Oscar nominations come with some surprises

Published: Wednesday, January 24, 2007

WILLIAM KERNSA-J ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR

By the time the last Oscar had been handed out in 2006, there was no shortage of industry prognosticators already setting the odds for the musical "Dreamgirls" to run away with the Academy Award for Best Picture of 2006.

Academy Award nominations were announced Tuesday morning in Los Angeles. One of the two biggest surprises is that "Dreamgirls" was not nominated for Best Picture and Best Director (Bill Condon).

The other surprise was that Clint Eastwood's masterful "Letters from Iwo Jima," which arrived very late in the year, still managed to boot "Dreamgirls" out of both categories.

Associated Press

This promotional photo provided by DreamWorks, shows actor Eddie Murphy in a scene from "Dreamgirls." Murphy was nominated Tuesday for best supporting actor and co-star Jennifer Hudson was nominated for best supporting actress as the nominations for the 79th annual Academy Awards were announced in Beverly Hill, Calif.

And that, by the way, sets up a third duel of sorts between Eastwood and Martin Scorsese, the latter nominated for his direction of "The Departed." It is Scorsese's sixth nomination in the directing ranks; no other director in history has been nominated six times without winning.

Nominated for Best Picture of 2006 are "Babel," "The Departed," "Letters from Iwo Jima," "Little Miss Sunshine" and "The Queen."

"Dreamgirls" earned the most total nominations with eight; I've no idea if this is the first time that the film with the most nominations was not nominated for best film.

However, the total becomes less impressive when one realizes that three of the nominations for "Dreamgirls" are in the Best Song category - with the film's producers purposely inserting new songs into the Broadway-inspired musical in a blatant attempt to grab those extra nominations.

Despite his major nominations, one doubts that Eastwood is happy with only four nominations for "Letters from Iwo Jima" and no consideration given the performances by Ken Watanabe as Gen. Kuribayashi and Kazunari Ninomiya as a baker drafted into the army.

On the other hand, talk about upsets! Eastwood's "Letters" arrived at virtually the last minute via an unexpected December release. It earned no respect from the producer's guild, directors guild, screen actors' guild and writers' guild. That is unheard of.

Then again, no Best Picture nominee cleaned up this year. Consider that the five Best Picture nominees earned only a total of six nominations in the categories of art direction, cinematography, editing, music score, song, sound and sound mixing.

One can quibble a bit, but the nominations in acting categories should not inspire any major debates.

There was a time when Oscars for acting were given only to white nominees, and the mere nomination of a single black actor made headlines.

This year's nominees include five blacks, two Hispanics and one Asian. I wish Ninomiya also had been nominated, but whose place would he take?

I am especially pleased that Eddie Murphy and Mark Wahlberg were nominated for supporting work in "Dreamgirls" and "The Departed," respectively - although, with Leonard DiCaprio instead honored for his stronger performance in "Blood Diamond," this means that "The Departed" earned only one acting nomination.

On the surface, that seems absolutely nuts. The film has one of the year's strongest acting ensembles.

The year's three best animated films all were nominated: "Monster House," "Happy Feet" and "Cars."

Still, the occasional nomination of missing name does aggravate. Clint Mansell's music score for "The Fountain" definitely should have been nominated.

And for some reason, Academy members decided to toss a bone to "Borat: Cultural Leanings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" in the form of a nomination for adapted screenplay. What a shame, to waste a major nomination that would be better deserved by "Thank You for Smoking" or "The Devil Wears Prada," to name but two.

Those following the Dixie Chicks will note that the documentary about their real-life troubles, "Shut Up and Sing," also earned no nominations - not even in the song category.